Does anyone have experience selling bitcoin and filing the capital gains?

As an example:

Is it as simple as filling out a tax form that you bought for 1BTC for $1000 through some source and sold 1 BTC for $5000 for a capital gain of $4000?

What if you spent .5 of the 1 BTC and can no longer account for it? Therefore, you bought 1 BTC for $1000 but sold .5 BTC for $2500. My guess is you would you just do the math on the capital gain without having to account for the other .5 BTC because the IRS is not interested in how you acquired or spent BTC but only in at what price you acquired them and at what price you are selling them because you may never sell them if you treat them like currency and instead spend them on goods.

“Should I sell this gimmick and guarantee a ridiculous return on investment or should I be greedy and risk losing once the inevitable bubble bursts?”

Tough decision

lol...yeah, when you put it like that.. I think I'll give it a few days and see what the CBOE futures do to the price. I may move some off my Trezor and into an online wallet/exchange so I can be ready to pull the plug.

in my opinion - you already won, big time. since it's not necessarily income you need - treat yourself to a nice vacation or new toy

“Should I sell this gimmick and guarantee a ridiculous return on investment or should I be greedy and risk losing once the inevitable bubble bursts?”

Tough decision

lol...yeah, when you put it like that.. I think I'll give it a few days and see what the CBOE futures do to the price. I may move some off my Trezor and into an online wallet/exchange so I can be ready to pull the plug.

in my opinion - you already won, big time. since it's not necessarily income you need - treat yourself to a nice vacation or new toy

How do you like your Trezor? I am looking to order either the Trezor or Ledger to hold some of my Bitcoin. Getting a bit nervous just holding it on coinbase.

I'm not looking to get rich quick (crypto), I'm not looking to get rich slow (index funds).. I'm looking to get rich, for sure (real estate).

“Should I sell this gimmick and guarantee a ridiculous return on investment or should I be greedy and risk losing once the inevitable bubble bursts?”

Tough decision

lol...yeah, when you put it like that.. I think I'll give it a few days and see what the CBOE futures do to the price. I may move some off my Trezor and into an online wallet/exchange so I can be ready to pull the plug.

in my opinion - you already won, big time. since it's not necessarily income you need - treat yourself to a nice vacation or new toy

How do you like your Trezor? I am looking to order either the Trezor or Ledger to hold some of my Bitcoin. Getting a bit nervous just holding it on coinbase.

It's kind of slick actually. I have never used a Ledger so I can't compare the two, but the Trezor is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. I can send BTC, ETH, LTC and BTG (BTG from the beta Trezor site since they just started supporting it) to and from Coinbase relatively easily (just cut and paste the addresses and enter my two factor authentication code). I guess one drawback is if you want to hold Dogecoin or some of the other cryptos that aren't quite as mainstream. Trezor only supports a few. I've always wanted Dogecoin, but never looked into what I would need to do to buy it. Nothing to do with the currency itself...I just like Shibas. So dog. Much furry. Wow!

What if you spent .5 of the 1 BTC and can no longer account for it? Therefore, you bought 1 BTC for $1000 but sold .5 BTC for $2500. My guess is you would you just do the math on the capital gain without having to account for the other .5 BTC because the IRS is not interested in how you acquired or spent BTC but only in at what price you acquired them and at what price you are selling them because you may never sell them if you treat them like currency and instead spend them on goods.

I would advise picking an approach and sticking to it. For example, if you report cost basis and sale price of BTC when sold, then you really (IMHO) should treat a purchase of something via BTC as a sale of the asset.

In your example, you bought 1BTC for 1k, and sold 0.5BTC for 2.5k. So your cost basis was $500, your sale price was $2500, your gain was $2000, and you still happen to have 0.5BTC (lucky you!).

I'm not a Bitcoin fan, but with such a low percentage of your portfolio at risk, I think I'd wait out the long term capital gains window. I'd think that the expected after tax return of your investment would be higher if you did that, as the assumption probably ought to be that the current value of BTC is the fair market value, and who are we to say otherwise?

But then again, I'm loathe to pay taxes that I don't have to, which perhaps biases my opinion. I also detest BTC, as it seems to be primarily a way to pay for illicit activities and hold people's files for ransom. Also, I'm probably just mad that I spent a bunch of time messing with BTC in 2009 when it was like $0.01 and got bored and dropped it.

Anyway, no, I wouldn't invest in BTC today if I had $21k in cash to invest. But I probably would if the offer was $16k cash now, or $21k worth of BTC that couldn't be sold for 7 months. As long as it's a small portion of my portfolio, the tax savings seem to be a fair compensation for the (admittedly excessive) risk, given that I think the EMH applies to Bitcoin as well as it does AAPL or VTI.

In the bitcoin community there is a meme "HODL" from a famous post. The spirit of it is essentially "stay the course". Its a fascinating overlap in philosophy among two communities with vastly different strategies. Since you seem to have adopted some of both strategies perhaps you should do a minor re-balance so you remain more boglehead than bitcoin.

In the bitcoin community there is a meme "HODL" from a famous post. The spirit of it is essentially "stay the course". Its a fascinating overlap in philosophy among two communities with vastly different strategies. Since you seem to have adopted some of both strategies perhaps you should do a minor re-balance so you remain more boglehead than bitcoin.

This is so ridiculous all I can do is lol at it. I'm thinking about pulling my original investment out and just playing with the cream, but as all BH's know the problem with this stuff is that nobody knows when to pull out so you end up holding well past the crash. Oh well, if I'm lucky maybe I can sell on the dead cat bounce.

I sold half of mine today. Made enough to cover my original investment. Way too much new money coming in. I had 3 friends all sign up and buy today. Thats my sign to leave for a while.

Nice! I missed the $19k+ run up or I might have been tempted to let some go at that point. Dropped 20% since then so I'm back in "HODL" territory.

This is absolute mania. I am glad I have a few timelocked and only release every year. Watching GDAX is like Star Wars right now. Should sell some but the Koreans are buying at $19K+. If the Chinese exchanges were not banned I think it'd be like $50K right now

I sold half of mine today. Made enough to cover my original investment. Way too much new money coming in. I had 3 friends all sign up and buy today. Thats my sign to leave for a while.

Nice! I missed the $19k+ run up or I might have been tempted to let some go at that point. Dropped 20% since then so I'm back in "HODL" territory.

This is absolute mania. I am glad I have a few timelocked and only release every year. Watching GDAX is like Star Wars right now. Should sell some but the Koreans are buying at $19K+. If the Chinese exchanges were not banned I think it'd be like $50K right now

I can tell it's going crazy when Coinbase starts locking up and throwing error messages. Then there is either really good news or really bad news (or one quickly followed by the other!). I've started bringing my Trezor with me to the office in case I need to hurry up and dump. Sword of Damocles and all that.

I sold half of mine today. Made enough to cover my original investment. Way too much new money coming in. I had 3 friends all sign up and buy today. Thats my sign to leave for a while.

Nice! I missed the $19k+ run up or I might have been tempted to let some go at that point. Dropped 20% since then so I'm back in "HODL" territory.

This is absolute mania. I am glad I have a few timelocked and only release every year. Watching GDAX is like Star Wars right now. Should sell some but the Koreans are buying at $19K+. If the Chinese exchanges were not banned I think it'd be like $50K right now

I can tell it's going crazy when Coinbase starts locking up and throwing error messages. Then there is either really good news or really bad news (or one quickly followed by the other!). I've started bringing my Trezor with me to the office in case I need to hurry up and dump. Sword of Damocles and all that.

ok, I can't take it. I'm unloading my original position so at least I'm back to even if it comes tumbling down (it's more than doubled). I have to keep my Ethereum in play though. I have my eye on Kitty #8675309 and she's a Gen 4 Good Starter Cat with a snappy cooldown post-breeding. Still....can't....believe....this....shizzle...is...real.. - https://kotaku.com/people-are-spending- ... 1821050218

The opening sentence of the article made me lol for a solid minute. I think my family thinks I have totally lost it. "CryptoKitties lets you exchange a made-up thing called Ethereum for fake cats." *mic drop*

Sometimes it takes someone else putting it into words for the ridiculousness of it all to sink in.

I have completely sold my bitcoin and ethereum in several "lots" over the course of this week (via Coinbase). The end value deposited into my checking account was $25,063 on a $7,000 initial investment, for a 258% ROI since July.

I have completely sold my bitcoin and ethereum in several "lots" over the course of this week (via Coinbase). The end value deposited into my checking account was $25,063 on a $7,000 initial investment, for a 258% ROI since July.

I have completely sold my bitcoin and ethereum in several "lots" over the course of this week (via Coinbase). The end value deposited into my checking account was $25,063 on a $7,000 initial investment, for a 258% ROI since July.

A funny thing happened on my way to the exchange... I was waiting for the transfer from my Trezor to the exchange to go through and fell asleep so didn't sell anything last night. Woke up today and it had dropped down in the 14k range. *sigh*. Waited until a few minutes ago and let my original investment go @ $16337.89/BTC. I'll let the remainder ride in BTC, ETH, LTC and BTG, but at least now I am not playing with any of my own money.

I have completely sold my bitcoin and ethereum in several "lots" over the course of this week (via Coinbase). The end value deposited into my checking account was $25,063 on a $7,000 initial investment, for a 258% ROI since July.

A good move in my opinion .

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